


fatal flaw

by wafflelate



Category: Naruto, Sanitize - Sage Thrasher
Genre: Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24327256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: He'd always figured that the fight with the Senju would go on forever, but it hadn't expected it to be such a literal and personal forever.
Relationships: Uchiha Izuna & Yui (Sanitize)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 230
Collections: Exchange no Jutsu 2020





	fatal flaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sage_thrasher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sage_thrasher/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sanitize](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721824) by [sage_thrasher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sage_thrasher/pseuds/sage_thrasher). 



> This is recursive fanfiction for [Sanitize](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12431866/1/Sanitize) by Sage Thrasher.

#### 1.

Madara brings the healer Yui. She looks Izuna over and says to Madara, "I'm sorry." 

She uses that quiet, serious tone of hers. The one she uses when she won't be moved, when her opinion won't change, when she knows she's right. She knows there's nothing she can do. 

"Please," Madara says. 

"Wasting her time," Izuna says. It takes effort just to say that much, like traversing a mountain range instead of saying three simple words. 

Yui says, "Maybe if you ask Hashirama—" 

Izuna hisses out his next breath, cutting her off, but she has to look to Madara for a translation because Izuna has to go back to focusing on breathing in the way that hurts the least. 

"We will not go to the Senju." Madara sounds sure of it now, at least, instead of anguished by the choice. 

"Then he's going to die," Yui says flatly. 

#### 2.

Izuna closes his eyes in winter and opens him in an autumn years past. Madara is half the height he should be — and so is Izuna — and when they're doing their stretches on a training ground far from the houses and workshops Madara says to him, quietly, "Did you have a bad dream, Izuna?" 

Such a question from their father would only serve to investigate Izuna for a new weakness to stamp out, a way of criticizing him by coming at the flaw in his comportment sideways. Izuna had eventually come to understand that such questions from Madara weren't meant the same way: despite their father's campaign to pit them against each other in order to harden and sharpen them for the clan, Madara had never lost his soft and stupid heart. He always meant this sort of question earnestly. 

"It was nothing," Izuna says. 

He does not want to think about the way Yui the healer had muttered that she could only ease his pain. He does not want to think about how certain he is that his brother's unhardened idiot's heart had never completely closed to Senju Hashirama. Such things were in the past, or the future, or the false realm of dreams — already the morning sunshine has weakened Izuna's certainty that he had really lived so many years just to end up back here. It sounds like something from a spirit tale. 

When the healer turns out to be real, Izuna avoids her village and convinces Madara to do the same, sure that Yui had contributed to Madara's trust of the Senju. He won't let her bewitch Madara and bring the clan to ruin. 

Without the support of the Uchiha, without a neutral zone, Chiyuuku never does even earn its clever name, and Izuna never hears more than those few rumors about its healer...but Izuna dies just the same: wounded at Tobirama's hand and spending his last few days begging his brother not to trust the Senju. 

It just hurts much, much more. 

#### 3.

He dies on Senju Tobirama's blade faster, on a slightly different battlefield. 

#### 4.

He dies on Senju Tobirama's blade a little slower, which really just gives him time to notice the minutiae of Madara's grief for the first time: the way he won't eat; the way no one stops by to force food on him; the way Madara's chakra seeps out into the room, angry and desperate and sickened. For the first time, Izuna wonders if Madara will recover. 

#### 5.

Izuna doesn't take exactly the same missions every time — his skills change and grow. In this case, he's gotten good enough to take the mission to Land of Wind that Madara has always taken before. He runs into Senju Tobirama there, unexpectedly. Now is as good a time as ever to try and be rid of him, Izuna figures. Why wait to meet him on a battlefield closer to home? 

The Senju is able to pull water even from the parched desert air, and does his damn best to drown Izuna despite their location. Then he switches to knives instead of jutsu, and then he dies. The both of them are just sixteen or so, and Izuna has escaped the fight with just a small scratch along his arm. He feels accomplished. 

He plans to finally introduce himself to the healer on the way home, but instead he collapses halfway home. _Of course_ the knives were poisoned. Izuna hides under a bush, discovers that his hands are too shaky for even the simple task of destroying his own eyes to keep them out of the hands of thieves, and dies alone for the first time. 

#### 6.

"I did," Izuna says when Madara asks if he'd had a bad dream. He has to say it when he's in a stretch that makes him look at the ground, so that he won't have to look his brother in the face when he admits this weakness. 

Out of his peripheral vision, he can see Madara straighten up early out of his own stretch. "What was it about?" 

"The Senju," Izuna says. "I keep dying." 

"Izuna..." Madara's hands guide him out of his stretch. They settle on his shoulders, much too small. "I won't let that happen." 

But that's a lie: Izuna takes Senju Tobirama's blade to the chest again, and it's different but it's also just the same as always. 

"I'm sorry," says Yui, but she can't fix it, and Madara's soft heart makes his grief heavy, and Izuna doesn't get to find out what happens next. 


End file.
